Finally Back on the Road!!!

After six weeks of being sidelined The Traveling Locavores are finally back on the road!!!

It feels so good to be sitting in front of my desktop computer in my office/bedroom aboard Ladybug! The time away from Ladybug has felt endless. What most people consider a vacation, almost felt like torture. Now that I we are home again, I can finally tell you all about what has transpired.

On May 20 we left Cambridge NE after spending a wonderful month visiting with my family there. Steve found a convenient and inexpensive campground in Assaria KS for us to stop for the night. We discovered on our way to the entrance of the park that we had to drive about a mile and a half on a gravel and dirt road. It was bumpy and dusty causing Steve to question his decision to stay there. The site was not ideal, but it was only for one night.

So we made the best of it, as we always do. The saving grace was that they had a huge chicken coop with farm fresh eggs available for sale. So we knew we’d be stopping on our way out to pick up a dozen of those yummy eggs.

Overnight there was a torrential rain storm which made navigating the park a little difficult. After we stopped to buy the eggs, we turned onto that mile and a half stretch of gravel and dirt. Steve drove so slowly that his mph didn’t even register on the speedometer. We were on that last half mile when a big pickup truck was approaching from the opposite direction. Steve moved to the right about an inch to give him room. And that’s when we felt the muddy ground slip out from under us. The rear of Ladybug skidded into a ditch and tilted at an angle so far that we prayed to G-d that we would not turn over. It was the scariest thing we’d ever experienced in 6 years on the road.

Terry, the man driving the pickup, saw what happened and felt responsible. He immediately stopped to see what he could do to help us. A building contractor who works with his two sons, Terry had his sons come to assist.

Steve called roadside assistance from our insurance company, Progressive. The said it would be a 3 to 4 hour wait until someone could assist. But Terry’s son’s knew a wrecker company locally who’d done this sort of thing before. So he called them, and they were there in about 20 minutes with a huge tow truck and a smaller vehicle. We truly couldn’t comprehend that we could be pulled out of the ditch without tipping over! But they promised it would be done.

The tow truck driver put a chain around our rear axle that was winched by the small vehicle and one around the front axle that was attached to the wrecker. Ever so slowly he moved between the two winding the chains in a little bit at a time. The process took two hours. It was incredible to watch and quite the relief when all of our wheels were back on level ground.

Visually there wasn’t much damage. We lost the bottom of our two entry steps and there were a few dents on two of our rear storage bay doors from where they’d dug into the muddy ditch.

And just like that we were back on the road. We thought the worst was over. And thanked G-d profusely for watching over us.

That night we stopped at another RV park, had a good night’s rest and arrived in Nashville the next day

We spent a lovely week in the Music City and then headed to our next destination – Pickens SC to visit with our son and daughter in law.

For the most part that trip was uneventful, until it wasn’t. We were about 10 miles from our son’s property when suddenly Steve blurted out “we have no brakes!!!” A few seconds later we heard two explosive sounding booms. Somehow Steve managed to pull over to see if those booms were blown tires. But he couldn’t see anything. Still we sat for an hour to give the brakes a chance to cool down. It was a wasted hour.

He decided to drive ever so slowly and try to reach our destination. By some miracle we got to Brian and Eve’s unscathed. And immediately called our insurance company. It turns out that we’d blown the two rear inner tires. But it doesn’t end there.

First they had to put tires on. Then, the biggest wrecker I’d ever seen came and towed us to the repair shop quite a few miles away. When they got Ladybug up off the ground they were able to assess the damage. It was way worse than we thought.

As it turned out, pretty much everything under our motorhome was damaged as it scraped the ground on its way out of the ditch. We got an entire braking system, new parking brake, new ABS system, new leveling air bags, new shocks, rotors, calipers, 2 new tires and valve stems, new entry steps and our windshield needed to be re-glued. We still need to replace the two storage bay doors that were damaged, but we were anxious to get to our next destination and didn’t want to wait around another month for those to be done.

I can’t say enough wonderful things about Progressive Insurance for full time RVers. They paid for everything, gave us enough money to cover those bay doors, and reimbursed us for our hotel stay and all of our food. The total was about 20 thousand dollars!!!

We are finally back on the road again and currently at the Jersey Shore for three months and putting our ordeal in the rear view mirror. And our new motto is borrowed from The Dukes of Hazard” TV show: Keep it between the ditches.

Life feels gloriously normal again.